


Never Falter, Never Stray

by wakingdream



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Character Study, F/M, I don't know really what this is fuck sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-23 11:03:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4874281
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wakingdream/pseuds/wakingdream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Come vhenan, he says and you follow. You were always a curious creature and you can’t help but remember how the elders of the clan would tut in your direction and whisper, The Dread Wolf will bite you if you stray, but you never heeded their warnings.</p><p>Looking back, you wonder rather belatedly if you should have after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Never Falter, Never Stray

You are seventeen when the keeper deems you ready.  
You are to be officially recognized as an adult in the clan, and you cannot wait for the proud lines of June to grace your face to mark you as one of their own, at last.  
But what the clan elders do not tell you, is how much it hurts.  
You are seventeen, when the keeper (with steady but frail hands) pricks the needle into your skin.  
The process takes all day and night but never once does the Keeper waver and never once do you cry in pain. For you recognize the importance of your markings. This was how your ancestors marked you as one of their own, this was how they told the world of their freedom.  
Never again, will you submit.

You are twenty-two when you fall in love for the first time in your life. You had crushes and infatuations in the past, but this is it. This is the real thing. You fall in love with his knowledge first – the way his eyes glow when you admit that you want to know, so much more than what you were ever told.  
“What would you like to know?”  
“Everything.”  
Between missions you spend hours with him, learning (blundering painfully, rather) the rich notes and rhythms of ancient elven and listening to his stories of the Fade. You spend hours pouring over books, sharing a mutual delight of being surrounded by tangible remnants of past knowledge. The relationship begins from a mutual understanding (elven apostates surrounded by the steadfast faithful Andrastians) and you find comfort in knowing that at least one other being can hear you.

Solas sees them as markings of slavery, but you can’t help but remember how gentle and weathered your grandmother’s hands were, and how she painstakingly but lovingly marked them on your face – telling you stories her grandmother told her at the time of her vallaslin. She told you the stories slowly, emphasizing each word in hopes of you remembering them to tell your own grandchildren.  
_We are the last of the elvhenan, da’len, we must carry these stories so we remember, so we can endure for the days to become._

 _Come vhenan_ , he says and you follow. You were always a curious creature and you can’t help but remember how the elders of the clan would tut in your direction and whisper The Dread Wolf will bite you if you stray too much but you never heeded their warnings.  
Looking back, you wonder rather belatedly if you should have after all.  
When he wipes the markings clean and leaves you with a broken heart and a festering wound deep inside, you can’t recognize yourself, not anymore, not truly.  
Ashen hair, green eyes, straight nose, scar on her right cheekbone – beyond that, you worry deep down that in eternity, the gods will no longer recognize you.

You used to worship June and pray daily to Mythal but now you wonder if there is truth to the Maker and Andraste, and you begin to pray to them as well. A little extra luck never hurt, and being surrounded by thousands of the faithful begins to rub on you. You admire for their steadfastness, and wish silently to whoever is listening out there for answers and a little direction. For you aren’t too sure who to believe in anymore.  
And oh yes, the elven gods were real. But gods are meant to care, meant to help, meant to love. Or were they meant to destroy, meant to warn, meant to hate? Myth, legend, stories are all blurred and you cannot tell which is true and which is a lie – and deep, deep down, you do not want to know.

You are twenty-four when begin to not believe in anything, anymore.  
You used to worship the way your ancestors worshipped but you find yourself apathetic to it all, really. Not when your faith has been broken a million times, not when your faith in the stories you were told growing up were all diluted creative half-truths, not when your faith in believing that once two people found each other, that nothing could separate them has been broken in more ways than you count on.  
You are twenty-four, when you cut your own hand off your arm to save yourself.

**Author's Note:**

> I tried writing in second-person sorry ahhhhhhhhh


End file.
